Now that most high-end chipsets have been unveiled and they will be used in most flagship smartphones of next year, we thought that it would be very interesting to compare features and specifications of all the recently announced high-end chipsets. Let’s get to it then.

Starting off with the manufacturing process, except Samsung, everyone has moved on from a 10nm FinFET process to a 7nm TSMC process for fabricating their newest chipsets. Samsung is using its own 8nm LPP process for manufacturing the Exynos 9820, but it is more like an enhanced 10nm process rather than what the 8nm number suggests. If you don’t know already, Samsung and TSMC are two of the biggest chipset manufacturers in the world, and almost every fabless semiconductor company outsources production of their chips to either Samsung or TSMC. The smaller the fabrication process, higher the number of transistors that you can fit into space. More transistors generally translate into faster performance.

While Qualcomm has decided to with a 1+3+4 tri-cluster octa-core CPU for the Snapdragon 855, Apple is using a 2+4 dual-cluster CPU in the A12 Bionic. Huawei and Samsung are using a 2+2+4 tri-cluster octa-core CPUs in the Kirin 980 and the Exynos 9820, respectively. However, the Kirin 980 has stock Cortex-A76 CPU cores performing high-end tasks, while the Exynos 9820 uses Samsung’s homegrown Exynos M4 ‘Mongoose’ CPU cores. Samsung had a pretty bad 2018, no thanks to its ill-optimized Exynos 9810 chipset and its four Mongoose M3 CPU cores. Qualcomm on the other hand, uses Cortex-A76-derivative Kryo 485 Gold CPU cores, out of which one can achieve a maximum clock speed of 2.84GHz and rest of them can achieve a maximum clock speed of 2.42GHz. To me, Qualcomm’s solution appears most useful; as the one higher clocked Kryo 485 CPU core can achieve the maximum speed where single-threaded/single-core performance is necessary.

In terms of graphics performance, Apple has been the best in 2018, with its quad-core homegrown GPU. However, Qualcomm could come close to Apple with its Adreno 640 GPU this year. Huawei is the weakest here, while Samsung comes in third. The only chipset to support up to two 4K HDR displays and HDR gaming is the Adreno 640. Qualcomm appears to have made some strides here as the combination of features that it is offering is unmatched by its competitors. However, games on the Android platform are still not as mature or as high-end as games on iOS, so how useful these powerful GPUs will be in gaming remains to be seen. Apple seems to be fastest in terms of storage read and write speeds, all thanks to an integrated NVMe memory controller. UFS 2.1 storage speed is lower than NVMe storage, and no one has used UFS 3.0 storage in phones yet, so it will be interesting to see how fast phones with UFS 3.0 storage can go. I expect Samsung to use UFS 3.0 storage in the Galaxy S10 series of phones.

In terms of ISP, Qualcomm seems to be the strongest, with an ability to record 4K 60fps videos in HDR10+ format. Heck, it can even record real-time portrait 4K videos. Yes, you read that correctly. It can record 4K videos with real-time portrait effect with background blur. Now that’s quite something even Apple couldn’t achieve. Now, it’s up to smartphone brands to make use of this feature in their phones. In spite of its focus on camera quality, Huawei seems to be the weakest here; it is still stuck at 4K 30fps video recording.

Qualcomm and Samsung have the fastest 4G LTE integrated modems, with up to 2Gbps download speeds and 316Mbps upload speeds. They’re even compatible with 5G modems that are compatible with multi-gigabit download speeds. All chipsets have more than one dedicated core for AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) tasks. All chipsets support NFC reading and writing, but Apple has blocked NFC writing capability in iOS. Although all chipsets support Bluetooth 5.0 standard, the A12 Bionic is the weakest with support for just AAC codec, while other chipsets support AAC, aptX, aptX HD and LDAC through Android. The Snapdragon 855 wins in Wi-Fi connectivity, with support for next-generation Wi-Fi ad and ay standards, while others are stuck at Wi-Fi ac.

In terms of battery rapid charging technology, the Kirin 980 appears to be the most equipped (with 40W charging support through Huawei’s own SuperCharge technology). However, it is only compatible with SuperCharge and lacks support for USB-PD and Qualcomm’s QuickCharge. Apple’s A12 Bionic supports USB-PD with 15W+ compatibility. The Snapdragon 855 chipset supports 18W Quick Charge 4+ as well as 27W USB-PD. Samsung is still stuck at 18W Adaptive Fast Charge and Quick Charge 2.0.

Asif heads the editorial team at MySmartPrice. He has more than six years of experience in reporting consumer technology, and has been quoted in various esteemed publications, including TheVerge, TWiT, and SamMobile. Asif has immense interest in CPUs, GPUs, mobile chipsets, camera sensors, and apps. Asif can be tagged as one of the most patient team members as we often pick his brains when it comes to learn about complex tech topics like camera sensors.